Melting Pot Lunch Blogs

﻿No, this wasn’t Kaleidoscope’s take on Mayweather vs. McGregor. Melting Pot Punch was a far more peaceful event, although we won’t pretend there wasn’t some tension when the last piece of cake was offered round.

Taking place on August 23rd, Melting Pot Punch was Kaleidoscope’s way of celebrating one year of Melting Pot Lunches – an opportunity to celebrate 12 months of meal deals and breaking bread with over 200 people – and a chance to try out a new Melting Pot format.

All of our Melting Pot events have the common thread of bringing together diverse groups from across health and care – working towards our mission to create the most effective, exciting and replicable collaborations seen in any sector, anywhere.

After running 20 Melting Pot Lunches, we think we’ve created a recipe that works. In short: think of an interesting topic; invite along an expert to kick-off the conversation; find a venue unlike any you’d go to as part of your normal day job; assemble a group of interesting people who usually haven’t met before; and finally, find a willing employee to pick-up 15 or so meal deals (those things are surprisingly heavy).

We’re pleased, nay overjoyed, that Melting Pot Lunches have been so well received (100% of attendees would recommend a Melting Pot to a friend! We can’t believe it either). But, this being Kaleidoscope, we’re always keen to try something new. For Melting Pot Punch, we assembled a diverse group of people from across health and care – but instead of inviting along an expert we asked the group to decide what tantalising topics to talk about.

So, what did a mish mash group of 20 people, ranging from policy makers to clinicians to journalists, choose? We provided attendees with 10 options to pick from, and the following 3 were the favourites:

How do we build proactivity in health and social care instead of waiting until a crisis occurs?

NHS jargon: are we using the right language to advocate for the NHS/health?

Is patient engagement a top 3 priority in the NHS right now?

I could write a much longer blog about all the conversations at Melting Pot Punch (in fact, Richard did for topic no.3 – more on that here). But really, the topics themselves are only a small part of it. What we value even more highly at Kaleidoscope is the chance to bring people together, people who wouldn’t normally have the chance to meet and yet are all working towards the common goal (however tangentially) of creating the best possible health and care sector – because we believe this is when the magic happens.

It may sound simple, even obvious, but consider your normal working week: how many can say that they deliberately sought out opinions from someone working at the opposite end of care delivery; or spoke to the head of an Arm’s Length Body, a junior doctor and a journalist all in the space of five minutes?​Trialling Melting Pot Punch definitely gave us some fresh food for thought. We’re excited to launch our second year of Melting Pot events, kicking off with 7 Melting Pot Lunches this season. Whether you’re a seasoned luncher or hadn’t even heard of Melting Pot Lunches until this moment, do come along and join the conversation. Who knows where it might take you?